Alive ....& barely breathing

Finally found time to update this blog with some works from last term! Classes got canceled this afternoon so I stayed up late and woke up early to get all my homework done for nothing (not to mention being stuck in traffic for an hour on my way home). I'm suddenly (miraculously) in the mood to get something done instead of lazing around on a free day...so here's an update to make myself feel "productive".


Starting off with stuff from last term....

Mold making and casting - This class was such a painnnnn because most of the assignments required me to work in the school's industrial building. Mold making is really all about trial and error which was extremely frustrating since I barely had time to go back and redo my projects. It was also hard to find parking by the industrial building so I usually had to park in our school's underground parking lot and then dragged all my materials down six blocks in the freezing cold (morning class) to get to class. Breathed in a lot of smelly chemicals and made my studio a mess, HOWEVER I did learn a lot and enjoyed it for the most part. Also familiarized myself with a lot of machines in the building (band saw, sanding machines, lathe, etc.)

Looks like chocolate!
It's actually a piece of carved foam dipped in melted brown clay. I took a piece of hard foam and carved/turned it on a lathe to create the basic shape of my cup/pot. Then dipped it into melted clay and returned it to the lathe again to clean up.

 Am I speaking alien?

 Long story short-  had to build a mold box and then made a plaster mold (plaster and I don't get along). Poured in melted wax to get a prototype of final cast.

 The birth of my wax cast! Mold making is rewarding when everything goes well...

Trimmed off top. This is only the prototype, for the final cast we poured in clay slip to make usable cups.

Another project was to make a mold and cast of our hand holding an object. Photo on the left was my cast/pattern made from a one-time-use mold. Then we had to make a new reusable silicone mold from that cast. It looks fine in the photo, but my plaster didn't set so it broke at the base and chipped in several places.

Top Right: Silicone we used for the reusable mold. Can only be handled in dish washing soap or it'll stick all over your hands. All the skin on my hand died and peeled after this project =(

Bottom Right: Putting silicone over my cast/pattern.

 Making a mother mold for my silicone mold. Basically making a big plaster mold OVER the thin silicone mold so it'll hold its shape. Had to remake this twice. SO MESSY!

Mother mold done at last T_T...although my plaster didn't set properly again.

Final project was to make mold out of expensive silicone and cast it in whatever material we wanted. Designed my pattern with Sculpey and sanded it so it was all nice and smoothed.

Build mold box in preparation for a 3 part mold. The bottom piece was intended to be removed later.

Using grey clay to block off one side then poured silicone over.

Gooey purple silicone!

After silicone cured, flipped over and removed grey clay.

At this point everything was looking perfect... I knew it was too good to be true.

Poured in second half...

Tried to take apart my mold and it was stuck together!! My mold release failed on me.... ended up cutting it with a knife that was too short to make a proper cut...

And it broke my pattern...

Pretty much sums up how I felt on finals day.

All my project in one photo (the stuff in the back isn't mine). You can see the final cast of my hand+object on the left.

 Just for fun.
What my garage studio looked like when I first moved furniture in...

What it looked like after last term...although I did clean it after I took this photo =P

I became obsessed with wood toys/figurines after going on pinterest and attempted to make some simple wood stuff during mold-making class.

Not sure what colors to paint these yet. Im planning to make a wooden robot sometime.






















Car modeling class  was a fun relaxing class among the other two frustrating ones. I modeled my dad's old Lincoln Mark V that he bought 20 years ago and left in the garage because he loves it too much to sell it. Originally, I wanted to model a cool fancy car for my portfolio but in the end I went with something I had direct access to. Also modeling something more personal was an enjoyable experience.

Front and back views. Entirely modeled, lit, textured, and rendered in Maya

 Wire frames.
The car was pretty simple to model and didn't require a lot of crazy topology although there were a few challenging parts like the back and trims. Lots of little details compared to a modern car and TRIMS. EVERYWHERE.

 Took a short film project class with a friend and our goal was to model, texture, lit, and animate everything within 1 term. Now that I think about it, we were probably out of our minds hahah.

We ended up getting all the models done (which took over half the term) so there wasn't enough time to properly texture everything. Wish I had the time to experiment with Vray lighting. Im probably the worse at lighting...

Occlusion render thats so noisy you have to cover your ears hahah

 No time to animate. I made a sad attempt at rigging...it did the work but wasn't something we could animate with. Ended up making something like a slideshow/storyboard.

Story was a twist on Pinocchio.

I modeled and recycled most of the little characters and detailed while my friend set up and built the interior. He also modeled and designed our awesome fairy inspired by Lady Gaga,

 Forgot to render a complete shot of my Geppeto model. Will do later.

(Can adjust quality in youtube)
Our "final" work-in-progress video which was included in our school's animation show. Our school was actually able to rent out a theater to play our projects which was pretty awesome.

 Figure painting class - Super glad I took this class because I learned a ton about color and light. Honestly, I thought I was a decent painter before I took this class since that was what I dedicated myself to during high school years...but this class made me realized that I was never really 'painting' but more like copying and "drawing" with paint. What we learned to do was to really analyze colors and exaggerate what we saw with what we know about color and light. I also found out that painting from a photo vs. painting from life is COMPLETELY different. Painting from life is about 10x harder.

The critique I got from my instructor this term was that I was always too focused on the drawing aspect and not the painting aspect. Also she suspected that I was colorblind at one point cause I was having trouble with my color palette HAHA.

Here are painting exercises we did in class.  These are from photos and not from life.

About 15-20 minutes each for B&W ones...45 mins to 2 hrs for colored ones.

Paintings from live models. You can clearly see the difference between my life paintings and photo paintings. Seriously need to work more on painting from life...
There were a lot more but half of them looked too horrendous to be posted.

First live model painting. Face proportions are all wonky. Doesn't look too bad but still too drawing-ish.

Super exaggerated colors and kind of all over the place. But I tried to loosen up on the 'drawing' aspect.

Painting myself by looking in a mirror. HAHA self portraits always make me laugh...

Second attempt at painting myself from looking at the mirror, only this time it looks nothing like me.

Slightly creepy eyes but I was feeling more confident with my colors and brush.

Last day of drawing from a live model. Tried painting from head to torso. Definitely saw improvements in my colors compared to the first few weeks :D

Final project! I wanted to paint from life but nobody was willing to model for me for four hours...so I just took a photo of my aunt cooking. I really tried not to over-draw and just focused on colors and brushwork.

Crappy iphone photo...but overall pretty happy with the results because I really felt like I was painting and not drawing.





















Other misc. stuff. 

Not sure if I ever posted this. I found this photo from my old itouch. Designed and sculpted this character for my character sculpting class last year. Still need to photograph this for my portfolio...

 Probably doesn't really belong in this blog, but I finally got this print I've wanted forever! It's by Enfu, a Japanese artist based in Seattle WA.

 No money to get it framed professionally so I went to a local wood-shop and had them cut me a piece in the exact size. Pasted the poster/print on with some mod-podge.

New render of my torso model from last year. Got rid of the shiny surf. shader.

Taking an ecorche modeling class this term. We will be modeling the human body accurately with all its muscles and (possibly) veins. This is an awesome human figure my instructor brought in as a reference for us to use.





Im currently taking a motion broadcasting graphics class...which is basically a beginners After Effects class. Our assignment was to create a cheesy 80's VHS/media logo so here's my attempt. O god the light sweep and glowing font brings back memories of the internet during the 90's when angelfire, xanga, and asianavenue were still alive.


My very first after effects project! We had to make a short "self portrait" video to introduce ourselves to the class.


Okay, that was the longest blog post I've ever done. Mission accomplished. Time to procrastinate and laze around.